Verse 11., thou wilt show me the path of life. Thou, O Jehovah, wilt make me to enjoy the way of life the blessedness of heaven-as the Redeemer of a lost world.

-, fullness of joy is in thy presence. But where is that presence? It is in the world of the blessed, when God unfolds his glory.

, at thy right hand, where the Son of God has forever set down, are pleasures evermore. Thus we are taught, not only the resurrection, but also the ascension of our Lord.

In conclusion, I have only to observe that from the interpretation given by the apostles Peter and Paul of the last three verses, it follows that the previous part of the psalm must be understood of the same person, otherwise all congruity and consistency are destroyed, and all the Philistines of a double sense are at once upon us.

ART. VI.-MAINE DE BIRAN AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE REVUE CHRETIENNE.

Euvres Inédites De Maine de Biran, publiées par ERNEST NAVILLE, avec la collaboration de Marc Debrit. 3 vols., 8vo. Pp. 1,383.

1859.

Inedited Works of Maine de Biran, published by ERNEST NAVILLE, with the co-operation of Marc Debrit. 3 vols., 8vo. Pp. 1,383. 1859.

MAINE DE BIRAN is one of those men whose reputation has continually increased, because the age which disregarded his first productions has but gradually realized the influence which they have exercised on the progress of ideas and the general advance of the French mind. The same fortune of his works, published as they were at long intervals, and mostly after his decease, has in no small degree contributed to excite our curiosity, and to increase our sympathy for a solitary thinker, who, from his early obscurity, has arisen upon us little by little in his principal features and under forms so varied. The progressive history of this rare genius reproduces, as in epitome, the gradual develop

ment of the minds of our times; and by a marvelous coincidence the first of these two histories has only been known as it unfolded the second in its three principal periods. The philosophy of the nineteenth century, upon its first appearance, assumed the empirical, sensual, and at the same time materialistic direction which had prevailed in the preceding century; but in its second phase, paying a listening ear to the eloquent interpreters of spiritualism, it discarded the imitation of Locke and of Condillac for that of Plato and Descartes; in short, obeying its secret instincts, and at the same time listening to the lessons of experience and history, it has accomplished its third evolution by approaching, timidly at first, but with a decidedly increasing interest, the moral and religious questions which attach themselves to the study of Christianity. The mind of M. de Biran underwent the same changes; it attached itself successively to the ideology of Condillac, to the reaction of spiritualism, and to the meditation of the Gospel. It expressed, it summed up, so to speak, the three successive movements of cotemporaneous science; and after having forcibly co-operated in a species of philosophical revival in our country, it came to associate itself in some sort with our present religious awakening.

When M. de Biran expired in 1824, at the age of fifty-eight years, small was the number of his friends who felt the loss that French philosophy incurred in his death. Among his friends were reckoned Royer Collard, Ampère, Stapfer, Guizot, V. Cousin ; and one of them-Royer Collard-said boldly, "He is our master in all things." Another, the wise M. Stapfer, declared that his death was a calamity, and summed up all his regrets with this declaration: "I conceive that religious philosophy has need of M. de Biran." The public had not been wont to hold this philosopher in so great esteem; it had known but little of him except in his Memoir on Habit, printed in 1803, and which, excepting some expressions of dissent then unperceived, seemed to reproduce, faithfully enough, the doctrines of Condillac. It was scarcely two years after his death, thanks to the most eminent of his disciples, the name of M. de Biran, arising from its semi-obscurity, was hailed as that of one of the founders of the new philosophy. M. Cousin in publishing for the first time, in 1834, the Considerations on the Relations of the Physical and Moral of Man, preceded it by one of those

fine prefaces, of which he alone possesses the secret, and was enabled to fix the attention of the world of letters on the man whom he had often proclaimed his master, and the greatest metaphysician who had honored France since Malebranche. More recently, in 1841, the illustrious editor, wishing to complete his labor, prepared in four volumes the principal works of M. de Biran known to him; and philosophers believed that they possessed all the elements of a definitive judgment on this free and rigorous intellect; which, at first enchained by the ideologic sensualism of Condillac, had been rescued by his own reflections and put off a yoke unworthy of it, and who, after having rejected the prejudices by which it had been nourished, knew how, as we may say, to draw from its own substance a new and fruitful doctrine. Men admired this happy beginning, this thought so profound and strong, and the new school adopted for one of its founders the man whom M. Cousin persisted in calling the first metaphysician of his time.

But the work of the philosopher was not yet entirely known. The most of his productions, and in certain respects the most important, were inedited, and in danger of falling into obscurity, if a man of noble nature, M. François Naville, of Geneva, had not applied himself, with a wonderful perseverance, at first to discover, and then to prepare for publication, a great work on Psychology, on which he knew that M. de Biran had occupied himself for many years, and which all the world, except himself, had believed lost. The ardor of the venerable Genevese pastor would perhaps have been still greater had he known the progress made by M. de Biran; had he known that, after having broken with the philosophy of sensation in the name of the moral liberty of man, he had taken one step more in conceding to man, above the sensitive or animal life, above the human life properly so called, a divine or religious life, which was no other than the Christian life. Such are the facts decisively demonstrated by this publication of M. Ernest Naville, a worthy successor of his father in the pious work of re-establishing the thought of a great philosopher, and of restoring to his memory all the luster of which it is worthy.

The unpublished works of M. de Biran, which have at last come to light, are, 1. The Essays on the Principles of Psychology, which, with a General Introduction of the editor, compose

the first two volumes; 2. Many writings or fragments composing the third volume, the most important of which are entitled New Essays on Anthropology, and are a valuable discovery of the last editor, and the unexpected fruits of his labor and perseverance. It is in this last work that M. de Biran has laid down the results of his lofty meditations, and it is especially here that he teaches his Christian philosophy. Unhappily, the New Essays have been but merely sketched out, and some of them in part only, and they have reached us in a deplorable state of mutilation. The thoughts of the author had then a great need of an interpreter and commentator. We find this indispensable commentary in the General Introduction of the Editor. But this is not the only nor the principal merit of the work. It has others better suited to most readers of this Review. The chief fragment contains not only a philosophical and religious history of an eminent thinker, but it is above all destined to demonstrate a thesis of general interest, namely, that faith does not exclude philosophy, and that our reason and our conscience may lead us by degrees to a free acknowledgment of the truths of Christianity. From the history of M. de Biran the transition to the examination of this grave question was easy; for if it is true that a spirit so bold, and which has proceeded so far and so deeply in metaphysical speculation, has been led by that same philosophy even into the arms of faith, just as in olden times was the case with St. Augustine, does not this excellent example brilliantly confirm the hopes of those who in our day seek peace of spirit in the union of liberal science with the Christian religion? So M. Naville believed, for he starts from this remarkable experience to establish, by the aid of reasoning and of history, the possibility and legitimacy of Christian philosophy. In the following pages we shall examine how M. Naville has acquitted himself of his double task. We will study in him at first an interpretation of M. de Biran, since the Christian desires to show the harmony of all his convictions.

I. All the world knows that M. de Biran at first adhered ostensibly to the method and principles of Condillac, professing, on the authority of the masters, that "all our reasoning is derived fundamentally, and primitively, from our perceptions or reception of impressions." However, although when he entered

upon his career he admitted, without reservation, this dangerous hypothesis, yet his own moral sense and consciousness revolted against the prevailing doctrine. "What are our active powers?" he demanded from first to last; for this has been the problem of his whole life, and he seemed to have traced for himself the programme of his work when he wrote, about 1794 or 1795: "It would be desirable that a man accustomed to observe for himself should analyze the will, as Condillac has analyzed the understanding." He was destined to be that man; and there can be no doubt but that his analysis ruined that of Condillac. The editor perceives during this first period a certain indecision in the thoughts; he collects with care the minute evidences of a strife between contrary principles; and it was not very difficult for him to discern, even in M. de Biran's work on "Habit," "the germs, already developed, of tendencies which ought to lead very far from sensualism." There is, first, the conviction that there is an effort and reaction of the soul in certain impressions called active, and which, under the improper name of perceptions, are opposed to the sensations or passive impressions. Then comes the idea of cause; which, after having been considered as a product of the imagination, is studied again in a note upon the exercise of our personal power. In short, some serious doubts of the doctrine of Condillac, a penetrating and judicious critique of the pretended analysis of this philosophy, a strong showing forth of the want of a true analysis upon the science of the soul, reveal already the uniform predispositions and the incomparable perspicacity of him who has been called with reason "a man without equal in France for the talent of interior observation, for penetration and depth in psychological judgment."

Such an observer could not remain long ignorant of himself. So M. de Biran was not slow to acquire a full consciousness of his position. Compelled to meditate on the doctrine of the day, he had at once recognized its insufficiency; he had discovered of himself, without foreign aid, an essential element of human nature, of which this doctrine could render no account. He soon comprehended at what a distance he found himself from a doctrine which saw in man nothing but the passive subject of knowledge, a sort of alembic, whose impressions were mechanically transformed into ideas; and in the name of experi